Dust 514 Open Beta

Dust 514 has been around for a while now and many of you probably know of its existence. It’s innovative in so many ways, and since it’s now in Open Beta anyone can try this amazing FPS game.

Dust 514 is a free to play MMOFPS game for the PlayStation 3 made by the same company who brought you Eve Online (Some ex-members of Dice are also involved in Dust514).

As a matter of fact Dust 514 is set in the same universe and even more amazingly can interact and directly affect Eve Online.

I have been lucky enough to have been playing the closed beta for some months now and I am very impressed by the way this game is. More so since the recent merging of the closed beta with the Eve servers now allowing things like Orbital Bombardment:

Eve Online is a game that’s been around for years, and unlike many other MMORPG’s it has steadily grown it’s player base annually. The game has a single-shard server which means that each player will play with one another rather than being separated by servers or factions. In Eve each item you acquire can be lost in battle which makes each achievement gained an amazing feat, but each loss also devastating. Dust 514 works in very much the same way. In Dust, you can immediately go in and start enjoying things like Team Death Match or Resource Battles. Each battle will reward skillpoints and ISK which can then be used to purchase new items or customize your character, however you must remember that each new gun you buy, each weapon or armour fitting could very easily be lost.

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ISK is the in game currency which luckily is given away at a level which can make gaining items relatively easy at the beginning, however due to the amount of customization you soon realise that this is far from the entire picture. Apparently they’ve calculated that to fully customize a character it would take approximately 7 years of non-stop grinding which really shows the insane level of customization available.

You can also purchase Aurum which is purchasable with real currency, however unlike many other games they have stressed the point that even if you do purchase things it won’t give you an unfair advantage, only allow you to expand your character and enjoy at a rate you wouldn’t as a completely free to play player. Although I’ve yet to find a need to purchase Aurum; I most certainly think people should as it helps support the developers who have put years into creating such a diverse game.

In Dust 514 there are no clear archetypes for players which is another nice addition to the customization. Rather than thinking “I want to be a sniper, so I’ll buy a sniper rifle and sniping gear” things really aren’t made so black and white. If you want you could be a sniper who has heavy armour, or you could be someone who uses light armour to sprint around the battlefield while using a SMG or Assault Rifle.

As I previously mentioned Dust 514 directly affects Eve Online this is done through things like calling in Orbital Bombardment (as illustrated by the first video) but it is involved in a much, much deeper way. Think of it like this: Eve players are flying round in space with their mega-corporations and having their space wars and such, but to help take over planets they send in mercenaries to capture strategic points and gain control of said planet. Players of Eve can also make contracts for Dust 514 players to complete which can make a large impact on the game that Eve players are playing but also gain renown for your clan and other players of Dust 514, which in turn means that you may be sent more Contracts by players of Eve if they think you’re suited to the job. Here’s a little explanation of how some of the game to game interaction works:

Dust 514 can also interact with the Vita. Although sadly it’s not possible to play Dust 514 on the Vita the console can actually add a lot to the game (though sadly this is yet to be implemented). It allows you to control everything that you can in game except actually playing a match which a little saddening however this may be changed in the future.

As a side note anyone with access to a CFW PS3 and a Vita would you mind testing if multiman makes it possible to play Dust 514 through the Vita? Leave the results in the comments or feel free to mail me (Tonakai) on the forums.

Dust 514 also offers a large amount of customization with Vehicles. With regards to the controls it’s very similar to Halo which I love since although I was never a fan of the Halo franchise – I did love the vehicles. Much like everything else in Dust 514 these are purchasable, upgradable and just a heck of a lot of fun. You can go round in attack buggies, tanks, drop ships and all other types of vehicles that you can customise to your playstyle.

I would just like to add that I absolutely adore driving around in LAV’s and running people over, or using HAV’s to destroy large groups of players. I’ve yet to really look into the dropships, but having gunned in them I can say that it is also incredibly enjoyable.

If you’ve played Dust 514 then feel free to share your opinions on this game. Personally, I give it a 4/5. It would be higher, but I really would love the ability to play on my Vita. I understand that’s rather expectant of me, but it’s the only downside I have to the game. It has large maps, great customization and a lot of time can be enjoyed playing it but it’s also suited for the casual player, which is a very hard balance.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a HD Gameplay video that includes a bit of everything… enjoy!

I’ve also been playing it for a few months. Since the last merge of the Eve and Dust514 they wiped out the progress of any and all Char’s. As a result I have not been playing it as often as I once did. So take note to any and all new comers, THEY WILL WIPE YOUR CHARACTERS UPON FINAL RELEASE! Any and all stuff purchased while playing the beta will be refunded to your account. Stuff purchased and locked to A single Char’ will be refunded to your account. Remember, When a wipe is done, all char’s will be deleted. TAKE NOTE, IT”S STILL A BETA!

Really? that’s pretty upsetting. I’ve been unable to play for a little while as it kept asking me to validate my email even though I had already logged in. I did the resent updates and planned to play when I had some spare time but wanted to alert people that it was now open beta.

When you win matches you gain the in game currency called ISK, and you also gain skillpoints. The skillpoints seem to have a fixed amount, but depending on your actions during a match you can gain more.

When you go to the marketplace you then purchase the skills required to wear whatever new item you want (at first you’ll need ISK and Skillpoints for this, but after level 2/3 they seem to be Skillpoints only).

Okay, so you’re now capable of wearing whatever item it is you wanted, so then you need to buy it, of course. When you purchase it you can buy up to 99 of that item.

After fitting it on your character sheet you can then go into battle and use it. However, every time you die you lose 1 of that item. You can restock in battle, and things are relatively cheap (like my heavy gunner requires 26k to restock the entire set, but on average you get 100-300k ISK per win depending on your Kill/Death).

dude, I’ll agree that dust514 is an fps, but that’s just the genre. Play it, and you’ll get it. Saying that its a “cloned call of duty looking game” is not really accurate. It seems that the only comparison you’re drawing is that it’s an fps, which is hardly a sound argument.

I’ve enjoyed the Call of Duty games since their incarnation and although I do agree that they have brought many innovations to the genre, they do not make the best games nor do they own the genre.

Dust 514 is nothing like CoD… at all. It has better controls, much nicer graphics, vehicular gameplay which is incredibly fun and a heck of a lot of customization. What’s more? It’s COMPLETELY free. Why pay £50 for a FPS game that you know is going to be identical to the previous game in which you simply run around and gank people? It’s not fun and there’s nothing rewarding that comes from this. Dust 514 is free and actually the most fun I’ve had in years in the FPS genre; especially since everything is persistent AND you can use the PlayStation Move which makes me very happy because I do rather enjoy FPS games on the Wii/u.

I would suggest you at least try it before making such large accusations as what you say is so very far from the truth it’s actually worthy of ridicule.

When it was first announced it was meant to be for the PS3 and the Xbox 360, however they dropped Xbox and decided to make a Vita companion which would work much like the Gameboy Advance did with the Gamecube.

Been playing dust since day one! They RUINED the game on the la st update! There were ladders to climb tall buildings and they added 8 foot walls on top now. Waste of time climbing up now. Also there are MORE bugs then ever. CRASH CRASH FREEZE. Don’t let me start on the cheaters who use lag switches to teleport right before you kill them. On ly reason I still play is because I spent real cash in the beginning. The game is EXACTLY like black ops 2 except your in space gear. U. Also use to be able to land a ship on top of the mother ships and tall buildings. They stopped that two. You have to crash into the tall buildings and lose a 300,000 ship to get up there. I always drop spawn drop links so snipers can teleport up there. No one would enjoy playing on a small vita screen. Must have a big flat screen. Snipers are everywhere, you would never see them on the vita.

hi, u can most certainly play dust on vita if u own a vita 1.67 and a ps3 3.55 cfw and register the vita as mobile device instead of vita or psp that way u can start multiman with remoteplay xor ps3 games on vita … just reconnect after launching the game i have tried this a half year ago in the summer with other ps3 games its only to bad u dont have R2 L2 on vita good luck tho tricking/hacking the uplink